


Not So Long

by Katherine



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dragons, Eggpreg, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23721757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: Carrying the thing now was fine enough. In truth, now and again Draco felt a tickling sense of pride at being useful in such a way. Being particularly well-suited to the task, to keeping something rare and precious safe.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Charlie Weasley
Comments: 4
Kudos: 100
Collections: Unusual_Bearings_2020





	Not So Long

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BiffElderberry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiffElderberry/gifts).



> For BiffElderberry, specifically the inspiring prompt "In order to reduce time in Azkaban post!Deathly Hallows Draco volunteers/is forced into, a creature breeding program. He is sent to Romania to the dragon preserve Charlie works at. [...] daily life with Draco carrying the dragon egg".

Draco attempted to not dwell on how he had been implanted with the egg. He was rather practiced at turning his mind away from unpleasantness. Carrying the thing now was fine enough. In truth, now and again he felt a tickling sense of pride at being useful in such a way. Being particularly well-suited to the task, to keeping something rare and precious safe.

Weasley had insisted that Draco observe at least one of the dragons, beforehand, and Draco reluctantly agreed.

"We'll keep well back," Weasley had said, going on to assert that the dragons rarely took much notice of wizards. That was not particularly flattering; better that a dragon should respect a wizard's power and be wary. They were only creatures, after all. Creatures that Draco had not made of point of remembering the breed name.

The breed of dragon had been mentioned in the contract that Draco had signed, his consent and measured good health flowing through the specially-spelled quill. Weasley had talked about not only the breed but the particular lines of the individual dragons in question, of a heritage breed. Draco remembered that line, more suitable to pets than wild beasts. But he had not bothered to retain the details. What did it matter, he thought, exactly which dragon was planted into him.

A type of dragon that, Weasley explained to his then largely uninterested audience of one, had difficulty carrying a full clutch to laying, thus the transfer of an egg from the dragon's inside to a wizard's. To Draco. He had volunteered for this, more or less. Choices constricted, but he preferred the strangeness of incubating a creature's egg to a sentence served in Azkaban. Considerably better surroundings, and the company of Charlie Weasley was tolerable.

It was something that Weasley was not his keeper; being in the depths of a dragon preserve was counted isolation enough, without Draco having his movements restricted nor even, so far as he could tell, recorded. But then, he was necessarily spending most of his time within the cottage.

In the pale afternoon light, dappled under the trees, the dragon had looked like a silhouette of itself at first. It was jet black, but a pretty enough creature. Handsome, Draco revised that to, when Charlie Weasley whispered (so near his breath tickled Draco's ear) that this individual was going to be the sire of the eggs, the clutch of which one would be transferred into Draco.

The dragon shifted, lazy-seeming, arching and rearranging his wings. The underneath of those and the dragon's flanks were speckled with silvery-white, markings like stars scattered on the night-black. These dragons were, Weasley explained, usually much more active at night. All too soon, Draco knew then, there would be a night in which the dragons would mate before moon-set. A highly specialised spell would be triggered to move one egg from the developing clutch into Draco.

All that had happened not so long before, and now Draco was rounded with that dragon's egg.

*

Draco would have liked to go flying, but did not quite trust his changed balance on a broom, and even if he had, it would have been inconvenient. Many of the dragons, Charlie said wryly, got snappish about wizards zooming about in skies that the dragons considered to be their own.

The egg and therefore Draco's stretched belly did not, of course, get bigger over the term of Draco's carrying it, but it did seem to get heavier as the time wore on. Charlie consulted reference tomes, blotted scrolls of notes, and far-flung colleagues by owl; he said that by such and such a time the dragon would be grown enough to move a little, deep inside, protected by the eggshell and by Draco's own self.

Draco's bedchamber would have provided privacy, but he had come to enjoy extending the evenings, usually reading while Charlie made notes about dragon matters. The ragged quill that he habitually used scratched; Draco expected it was a hand me down, or at the least an old one kept for sentiment. He might ask for that story, some time. Charlie had a richness in his voice when unselfconsciously explained some detail about the preserve, or read researcher aloud.

When the moment came, it could hardly be further than the rush of catching the snitch, the crowds cheering; the quickening was an infinitely quieter triumph. Surprising enough that Draco gasped. His charm that kept the book he had been reading hovering at his face held. Charlie batted the book away as he leaned in, one big hand on the armchair's side.

Charlie's hand on Draco's swollen belly felt shockingly good. When he leaned nearer, the end of his braid fell, tickling. Unbearable, somehow, the tickle of hair on the outside and the half-imagined fluttering, shifting presence of the dragon inside. Draco buried his hands in Charlie's hair, and surged upwards into a kiss.

*

Charlie took Draco to see the mother dragon, in the last dregs of a lazy afternoon spend abed.

"She won't hurt you," Charlie had said, which was definite but not as reassuring as it might be. Charlie offering the start of an explanation helped, somewhat. "They never hurt a dragon that's egg-heavy, and she will sense that you are."

Returned to the cottage, Draco now had a mug of tea in his hand; an actual mug, heavy, nothing like the elegant teacups his mother had favoured. He imagined setting it down on the protrusion of his belly, which was too rounded to be much of a shelf but distinctly more of a presence than it was supposed to be, stretched big around the egg. That would probably get him a lecture from Charlie, something about keeping the environmental temperature steady for the developing dragon.

He had been here long enough he should be used to the crude mugs, the simple surroundings. He had not noticed them so much since the first days. Perhaps it was the contrast, the wild outside full of dragons, and the cottage full of Charlie.

"Cup of tea always helps," Charlie said, with such bluff cheer that Draco wondered if he were joking, putting it on. Draco should have had better control of himself than to betray, in some look that Charlie noticed, he had found the sight of the mother-dragon unsettling. But then, Charlie had become rather practiced at noticing Draco. It could be the small quarters, let alone sharing a bed.

They had left it in disarray. Draco set his half-drunk tea aside before fussing with the blankets and pillows, mounding them, wanting soft walls and a way to be surrounded. He thought of a dragon curled around its hoard, and then, inevitably, of one protecting its yet-unhatched young. A nest. The dragon carrying the rest of the clutch had yet to build one, Charlie mentioning that he had timed their observations thus. They could be dangerous, at a time much closer to laying.

Charlie touched Draco's arm, skimming, and reached to help with, not making the bed, a ridiculously domestic task, but remaking it. Without putting a point on the matter by words, Charlie summoned over additional pillows, helping put his bed that had become theirs into a nest sized for two.

Charlie's tone was gentle. "Have a sleep. I've some notes to make, then I'll join you."

Draco curled up around the egg inside him, within the nest that Charlie had helped him make, and drifted. His dreams were vague in action but strong on image. Charlie the one big with an egg. A baby dragon they helped hatch, its scales silver-freckled. 

*

"I would prefer that this be done soon," Draco said, trying for his old haughtiness and, he suspected, not succeeding in hitting that particular note. He felt heavy, and the security of the nest-like bed they had made was shifting into a feeling of being constricted there. Internally incubating a dragon egg was not a quick assignment, no matter how softened by pleasant company.

"Soon," Charlie said, as he looked not to his copy of the preserve's calendar, layered with additional spells to track this project, but out the cottage's tall window. The moon was nearing full. Moonlight was not nearly so dramatic inside as out under the stars, but Charlie did look particularly handsome in the silvery light. When he kissed Draco this time, that was like a banked fire, steady comfort.


End file.
